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 his story be correct, a transcriber in peculiarly unfavourable circumstances. He has also himself suffered much from the inaccuracy of copyists. But nothing has really been more unfortunate for the reputation of Jordanes as a writer than the extreme preciousness of the information which he has preserved to us. The Teutonic tribes whose dim origins he records have in the course of centuries attained to world-wide dominion. The battle in the Mauriac plains of which he is really the sole historian, is now seen to have had important bearings on the destinies of the world. And thus the hasty pamphlet of a half-educated Gothic monk has been forced into prominence, almost into rivalry with the finished productions of the great writers of classical antiquity. No wonder that it stands the comparison badly; but with all its faults the Getica of Jordanes will probably ever retain its place side by side with the De moribus Germanorum of Tacitus as a chief source of information respecting the history, institutions and modes of thought of our Teutonic forefathers.

.—The classical edition is that of Mommsen (in Mon. Germ. hist. auct. antiq., v., ii.), which supersedes the older editions, such as that in the first volume of Muratori’s ''Scriptt. rer. Ital.'' The best MS. is the Heidelberg MS., written in Germany, probably in the 8th century; but this perished in the fire at Mommsen’s house. The next of the MSS. in value are the Vaticanus Palatinus of the 10th century, and the Valenciennes MS. of the 9th.

.—Von Sybel’s essay, De fontibus Jordanis (1838); Schirren’s De ratione quae inter Jordanem et Cassiodorum intercedat Commentatio (Dorpat, 1858); Kopke’s Die Anfänge des Königthums bei den Gothen (Berlin, 1859); Dahn’s Die Könige der Germanen, vol. ii. (Munich, 1861); Ebert’s Geschichte der Christlich-Lateinischen Literatur (Leipsic, 1874); Wattenbach’s Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter (Berlin, 1877); and the introduction of Mommsen to his edition.

 JORDANUS (fl. 1321–1330), French Dominican missionary and explorer in Asia, was perhaps born at Séverac in Aveyron, north-east of Toulouse. In 1302 he may have accompanied the famous Thomas of Tolentino, via Negropont, to the East; but it is only in 1321 that we definitely discover him in western India, in the company of the same Thomas and certain other Franciscan missionaries on their way to China. Ill-luck detained them at Tana in Salsette island, near Bombay; and here Jordanus’ companions (“the four martyrs of Tana”) fell victims to Moslem fanaticism (April 7, 1321). Jordanus, escaping, worked some time at Baruch in Gujarat, near the Nerbudda estuary, and at Suali (?) near Surat; to his fellow-Dominicans in north Persia he wrote two letters—the first from Gogo in Gujarat (October 12, 1321), the second from Tana (January 24, 1323/4)—describing the progress of this new mission. From these letters we learn that Roman attention had already been directed, not only to the Bombay region, but also to the extreme south of the Indian peninsula, especially to “Columbum,” Quilon, or Kulam in Travancore; Jordanus’ words may imply that he had already started a mission there before October 1321. From Catholic traders he had learnt that Ethiopia (i.e. Abyssinia and Nubia) was accessible to Western Europeans; at this very time, as we know from other sources, the earliest Latin missionaries penetrated thither. Finally, the Epistles of Jordanus, like the contemporary Secreta of Marino Sanuto (1306–1321), urge the pope to establish a Christian fleet upon the Indian seas. Jordanus, between 1324 and 1328 (if not earlier), probably visited Kulam and selected it as the best centre for his future work; it would also appear that he revisited Europe about 1328, passing through Persia, and perhaps touching at the great Crimean port of Soldaia or Sudak. He was appointed a bishop in 1328 and nominated by Pope John XXII. to the see of Columbum in 1330. Together with the new bishop of Samarkand, Thomas of Mancasola, Jordanus was commissioned to take the pall to John de Cora, archbishop of Sultaniyah in Persia, within whose province Kulam was reckoned; he was also commended to the Christians of south India, both east and west of Cape Comorin, by Pope John. Either before going out to Malabar as bishop, or during a later visit to the west, Jordanus probably wrote his Mirabilia, which from internal evidence can only be fixed within the period 1329–1338; in this work he furnished the best account of Indian regions, products, climate, manners, customs, fauna and flora given by any European in the Middle Ages—superior even to Marco Polo’s. In his triple division of the Indies, India Major comprises the shorelands from Malabar to Cochin China; while India Minor stretches from Sind (or perhaps from Baluchistan) to Malabar; and India Tertia (evidently dominated by African conceptions in his mind) includes a vast undefined coast-region west of Baluchistan, reaching into the neighbourhood of, but not including, Ethiopia and Prester John’s domain. Jordanus’ Mirabilia contains the earliest clear African identification of Prester John, and what is perhaps the first notice of the Black Sea under that name; it refers to the author’s residence in India Major and especially at Kulam, as well as to his travels in Armenia, north-west Persia, the Lake Van region, and Chaldaea; and it supplies excellent descriptions of Parsee doctrines and burial customs, of Hindu ox-worship, idol-ritual, and suttee, and of Indian fruits, birds, animals and insects. After the 8th of April 1330 we have no more knowledge of Bishop Jordanus.

Of Jordanus’ Epistles there is only one MS., viz. Paris, National Library, 5006 Lat., fol. 182, r. and v.; of the Mirabilia also one MS. only, viz. London, British Museum, Additional MSS., 19,513, fols. 3, r.–12 r. The text of the Epistles is in Quétif and Echard, Scriptores ordinis praedicatorum, i. 549–550 (Epistle I.); and in Wadding, Annales minorum, vi. 359–361 (Epistle II.); the text of the Mirabilia in the Paris Geog. Soc.’s Recueil de voyages, iv. 1–68 (1839). The Papal letters referring to Jordanus are in Raynaldus, Annales ecclesiastici, 1330, §§ lv. and lvii. (April 8; Feb. 14). See also Sir H. Yule’s Jordanus, a version of the Mirabilia with a commentary (Hakluyt Soc., 1863) and the same editor’s Cathay, giving a version of the Epistles, with a commentary, &c. (Hak. Soc., 1866) pp. 184–185, 192–196, 225–230; F. Kunstmann, “Die Mission in Meliapor und Tana” and “Die Mission in Columbo” in the Historisch-politische Blätter of Phillips and Görres, xxxvii. 25–38, 135–152 (Munich, 1856), &c.; C. R. Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, iii. 215–235.

JORIS, DAVID, the common name of or  (c. 1501–1556), Anabaptist heresiarch who called himself later ; was born in 1501 or 1502, probably in Flanders, at Ghent or Bruges. His father, Georgius Joris de Koman, otherwise Joris van Amersfoordt, probably a native of Bruges, was a shopkeeper and amateur actor at Delft; from the circumstance that he played the part of King David, his son received the name of David, but probably not in baptism. His mother was Marytje, daughter of Jan de Gorter, of a good family in Delft. As a child he was clever and delicate. He seems then or later to have acquired some tincture of learning. His first known occupation was that of a glass-painter; in 1522 he painted windows for the church at Enkhuizen, North Holland (the birthplace of Paul Potter). In pursuit of his art he travelled, and is said to have reached England; ill-health drove him homewards in 1524, in which year he married Dirckgen Willems at Delft. In the same year the Lutheran reformation took hold of him, and he began to issue appeals in prose and verse against the Mass and against the pope as antichrist. On Ascension Day 1528 he committed an outrage on the sacrament carried in procession; he was placed in the pillory, had his tongue bored, and was banished from Delft for three years. He turned to the Anabaptists, was rebaptized in 1533, and for some years led a wandering life. He came into relations with John à Lasco, and with Menno Simons. Much influenced by Melchior Hofman, he had no sympathy with the fanatic violence of the Münster faction. At the Buckholdt conference in August 1536 he played a mediating part. His mother, in 1537, suffered martyrdom as an Anabaptist. Soon after he took up a rôle of his own, having visions and a gift of prophecy. He adapted in his own interest the theory (constantly recurrent among mystics and innovators, from the time of Abbot Joachim to the present day) of three dispensations, the old, with its revelation of the Father, the newer with its revelation of the Son, and the final or era of the Spirit. Of this newest revelation Christus David was the mouthpiece, supervening on Christus Jesus. From the 1st of April 1544, bringing with him some of his followers, he took up his abode in Basel, which was to be the New Jerusalem. Here he styled himself Jan van Brugge. His identity was unknown to the authorities of Basel, who had no suspicion of his heresies. By his writings he maintained his hold on his numerous followers in Holland and Friesland. These monotonous writings, all in Dutch, flowed in a continual stream from 1524 (though none is